Looking for reverse phone lookup services can get confusing. You may begin with a quick Google search, hoping it will automatically pop up and you'll discover the information you desire with very little work. Yet what actually appears is a series of paid directories which range from less than a buck for one lookup to over fifteen dollars for a long term subscription.
Changing your search to specify free reverse phone lookup brings additional pay services hiding behind claims to be free. They sometimes allow you to type in the number free of charge and award you with very basic information such as the city and state, but if you need to obtain the important details such as a name or address you will then be prompted to pay.
Completely free reverse phone lookup does not exist. Providers of this information put out great efforts and even money to assemble information including unpublished landline numbers, cell phone numbers, and sometimes address histories. These businesses have no use for this information other than to deliver it to buyers for a small fee.
Where you go from here depends on how badly you really want to find out the person connected to that phone number. In the age of identity fraud many people won't just access the cheapest site and hand over their private information. Finding the most trustworthy sites is just as crucial as when you purchase tennis shoes or handbags through the web.
Finding the information you want isn't very difficult, once you find a proven service.
There are a growing number of competitive services all offering different fees and delivering different combinations of information. When you only want to know the name registered with a strange phone number calling your home or want to know exactly who your teenager is chatting with at all hours of the night, you probably don't have the desire to rate different websites.
The quickest solution may be to go with a name that many of us have grown up with and use the online version of the white pages. There is a sense of legitimacy when you use a well known household name that has been trusted for years. You can look up a phone number and get very basic information here without a fee, including whether the number is a cell phone or landline and a map indicating the general location if it is a home or business. You won't find much beyond that, especially if you are looking up a cell phone or a residential number that is unlisted.
Be alert at this point because there will be links from these pages that promise more detailed information, like names and desired addresses, for a fee. These links go to different webpages, so you have left the security of the yellow pages website so you need to verify the reputation of these services just as you would with any other. White pages itself is not going to reveal much information other than a general location; you will have to look elsewhere for more, especially if you need to research a cell phone or unpublished number.
The best way to locate reverse phone lookup services for basic needs is to go to a trustworthy directory with a small one time charge paid with a secure payment system. If you just want a one time lookup then it is usually not worth the charge to commit to a long term directory. Look for one that delivers a single lookup for a low fee, usually just a buck or two.
Forking over a high fee for very limited information or being asked to pay by sending financial information through email or other non-secure methods are clear warnings of a scam.